Emouvoir: Moving On
by aohitomi
Summary: Alone and guided by the TARDIS, the 10th Doctor finds himself on a planet of living emotions.  He is called to fight the void within himself before it can tear their world apart.  Set after Doomsday
1. Chapter 1

Émouvoir

The Doctor was traveling alone. He had no one to talk to. The clockwork of the universe was left unexplained. It was just him, empty time and the TARDIS.

He let the TARDIS drift in and out of different dimensions, wandering through the void and never stopping. When the TARDIS tried to pull him out of his misery and into some great adventure, the Doctor pulled back. He didn't want adventure. Not without his companion. He never slept. Because sleep brought the dreams. Dark dreams and darker places. The anger, pain. He felt them rise in him and disappear. And sometimes he would wake up knowing he had been crying while he slept.

One night, or was it night? the TARDIS jerked. He realized that he had been in a dreamless sleep and the TARDIS had taken control. She froze, letting him know that she wasn't going anywhere until he took a look outside.

"Where am I?" he asked the empty air. He kicked a loose bracket and smacked the viewscreen. It was a planet he had never been to before. The planet name flashed across the screen. Émouvoir. A planet that even the Doctor had never seen. They did, of course, exist, but there weren't many of them. He looked up. Lost in thought he took a few steps to the door. Sadness passed through him. Then anger. His emotions were pulling him towards the door and the lonely planet outside.

He touched the door and for a moment he thought of pulling back. Sending the TARDIS away might be an excellent idea at this point, maybe even the best he'd ever had. Who could tell what was on the other side of that door? Maybe he could find a small rock to sit on, a place where he could just be alone. A beach of starsand and a million lonely planets to keep him occupied. Or maybe the darkness of a Sontaran war. A dead planet lost to time and Time Lords.

He heard singing. Someone was singing in a high soprano. A sad voice, sadder than anything he had ever heard before, and it was coming from outside the TARDIS. He wanted to know that voice, know what could make such a sad sound. So he stepped outside.

And as soon as he did, small particles of multi-colored light, thousands of them, were pulled quickly from his body. They transformed into firework trails and raced into the night sky. He thought he could hear laughter and the sound of someone crying. And then they were gone.

All at once the Doctor slumped over as though something had pulled him forward. His eyes felt heavy and he closed them. Then he tumbled softly to his knees and felt soft sand. The lights in the TARDIS went out. Something was wrong, but he didn't care. There was nothing to care about. No emotion. Just thought. And time. Endless time.

Something brushed against him. "Hello there," he said and looked down at his knee. A small spark of pink light was hovering there.

"Hello," the light said. It's voice was small, soft like bells ringing. It was a child's voice.

"What are you?" The Doctor got close and cocked his head to one side, looking at the strange being in front of him. The light sparkled and reflected back in his glasses.

"I'm an Elysian. What are you?"

He spoke slowly, and it was hard to even muster the energy to talk. "I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord." But he was curious. A living emotion. How had he never heard of such a beautiful thing?

"I'm a Sadness." The Doctor seemed confused. "Give me your hand. I can show you." The Doctor put out his hand. He wasn't sure how exactly to give his hand to this Sadness, so he held it out and ran it through the wavering light.

The purest wave of emotion passed through him. It was physical sensation, deep, constricting his chest, and he closed his eyes tightly and tried to fight it. He felt the sadness, the weight, of a thousand dying stars. Children alone, crying in the night. Deep loss. The loss of a great friend. The tears came. He couldn't stop them.

The pink light pulled away quickly. "I'm sorry," it said.

The Doctor sat there for a moment. He was still, oh so quiet and still. And then he asked, "What did you just do? What was that?"

"That's what I am. I'm a Sadness. I had so awfully hoped to be a Happiness, or at least Confusion or a Terror. But here I am. Sadness."

"So you're a living emotion? You're some kind of living sadness?"

"Yes." The light was dancing, zig-zagging this way, that way. It cast small shadows on the ground.

"Do you have a name?" He was still staring.

"I...I don't, I don't, we aren't supposed to have names."

"I think you should have one," he said tenderly. "You're pink so why don't we call you Rose?" The Doctor watched as the pink light seemed to get even pinker. Maybe that was a Sadness' way of blushing.

"I like that. I like that name a lot. Thank you Doctor."

"That's good. I think it suits you." He lay back against the TARDIS and closed his eyes. All he wanted to do was drift off. The pink light coiled down beside him and waited until he was awake again. Soon the doctor was asleep and dreaming.

_Under a brilliant blue heaven, he swirls her around in circles watching the curl of her hair as it whispers through the air._

_A thousand time-lapse flowers cascade into being and then wither. A thousand time-lapse clouds race across the sky._

_A graveyard stretches across a planet, miles of silent stones that mark the passage of time. Worn by ages, some can not be read._

_People move across city streets, some quickly and some slowly. An old man lumbers across the street. A little girl runs with her mother. Time speeds up and is reversed. The girl returns to the corner. The man is pulled backwards. Only to repeat the journey._

_Stars are born and galaxies are ripped apart. The trees mark their time in wooden circles. The sun circles through the sky giving the gift of time to humankind. Again and again._

_And the time lord is still._

_She is always with him as he swings her through the dance. This is Eden. Laughing and smiling under the shade of ageless trees._

_And time stops._

_And the time lord_

awakens to the sound of falling screaming stars.


	2. Chapter 2

"Wake up! Wake up!" The little pink light was yelling. "Oh please wake up." She shook and little pink particles flew from her, burning out in the night. The Doctor looked up and saw the colored lights from before. They were no longer dancing in the sky, but seemed to be racing towards a point far beyond the horizon.

"What is it?" the Doctor asked. Rarely had he been the one asking so many questions.

"It's a void. You must have brought it with you. Oh please!"

The Doctor got to his feet and looked at the horizon. So many lights were racing there, disappearing. He realized these must be more Elysians, more living emotions. And they were dying.

He was shaken by the sound of death. He could feel it in his head, pounding, demanding that he do something. He began to run.

Rose followed alongside. "Voids open up when the strangers come. They suck in all emotion. They have to be destroyed. Please doctor!" He realized how brave this little sadness was. She seemed to still have a choice in whether or not to go, she could still run away, but she was racing towards her fate, attempting to save her kind. It seemed he always found the bravest ones. Even when he didn't feel brave himself.

He felt he was racing towards his own doom.

When he arrived at the void he stopped for a moment to catch his breath. Running on the black sand had been harder than he thought. But he never stopped. He reached the top of the dune and looked down. He saw himself, shifting in and out of darkness.

A copy of himself floated at the center of a dark hole in the earth. The flashing stars were being pulled into its body. Then it looked up and saw the Doctor.

"I knew you'd make it here eventually."

"Why are you killing them? What did they ever do to you?"

"I could ask you the same question. Why did you come here?"

"The TARDIS brought me here. I had nothing to do with it!"

"Think harder." Another star flickered into the abyss. And another and another. Rose trembled at his side.

"You wanted this. The TARDIS is linked to you. It knew exactly what you wanted." The creature that was the Doctor and wasn't the Doctor laughed.

"No!" the Doctor yelled. "You're wrong." But even as the words left him, he realized that some part of it was true.

"You wanted all your emotions to die! And so here you are. And here I am." It grabbed one of the lights and twirled it in its fingers, feeling the strength of anger before it absorbed it. "I can show you," it said with a sneer. "Here!" A burst of pure white light and the Doctor saw:

_a thousand time-lapse roses cascade into being and wither._

_A city street turns to rivers crashing down highways breaking apart the cement that could have lasted for thousands more years before its decay._

_A man running through winding back roads, running away from time, Daleks, Cybermen running in circles always returning to the same place_

_Genocide, the anger of nine-hundred years, throbbing in his heart, catching in his throat as he pushes the button to end a world._

_the hands on a watch quickly circle and come around again_

_planets dance figure eights around luminous twin stars_

_flowers and vines grow on graves that cover an entire planet. two lover's trees entwine their branches_

_a thousand time-lapse roses cascade into being and time freezes as the time lord picks one, blood flowing from his finger as he is pricked by a thorn_

_Rose._

Rose is there, not his Rose, but the shining pink emotion. Flying in front of him, protecting him from the thing that is him and isn't him.

"I won't let you take him!" she yells. "You'll have to get through me first." The doctor realized that all this time he was moving closer to the abyss. He had been two steps away from stepping in himself. He moved away.

"Rose, don't. You'll be killed."

"Don't you think I know that already? But I belong to you. It's what I have to do." She started to swirl and took on the form of a human. Of course. He should have seen it. When he named her, she became his. His sadness. She became his Rose.

_Rose. Rose Tyler. Rose you were always my happiness._

_He feels his heart lifting, singing with her. _

_Shining in a grove of ageless trees. _

_She holds him, pulling him forward. Filling his heart for the last time with the most immense joy._

"Thank you," the Rose that was and was not his Rose said and smiled. She pulled him close cradling his head and kissed him deeply. Time slowed, but could not stop. If he could have froze time in that moment he would have, but she pulled away to look at him one last time. "Thank you Doctor. May you always be blessed with happiness."

She leaped into the void. She filled the creature with light, and exploded into a thousand stars releasing all the emotions that had been trapped there before. Before the void disappeared, the Doctor heard a voice. "Did you see? You will never be free of them. Your sadness follows you no matter how far you run, Time Lord." The void was shrinking, filled with lights.

"That's where you're wrong," the Doctor said quietly, as if to himself. "My happiness follows too. The circle of time always comes 'round."

Then the void collapsed taking the vortex with it. A thousand brightly colored lights danced upwards into the sky, painting it like an aurora. The emotions of a time lord were enough to fill the night sky with color. Color enough to shade the stars.

He took a deep breath and went back to the TARDIS. He sat on a dark sand dune and looked up at the lights. He closed his eyes, and began to remember. After a few moments, as he watched the sky, he saw a pink light with a firework trail and he heard joy and laughter. Smiling softly, he went back to the TARDIS, opened the door and stepped inside. It was time to be moving on.


End file.
